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To help spell a word, many people rely on the NATO Phonetic Alphabet. However, in Germany, a different system is used. For example, A is Anton instead of Alpha, and B is Berta instead of Bravo.

Certain letters can be tricky to distinguish, such as M and N, or E and I, especially when spoken by a non-native speaker.

Below is a table with the German Buchstabieralphabet. If you need to spell Melktert for a German speaker, you would say:
M wie Martha, E wie Emil, L wie Ludwig, K wie Kaufmann, T wie Theodor, E wie Emil, R wie Richard, T wie Theodor.

LetterWord to useLetterWord to use
AAntonNNordpol
BBertaOOtto
CCäsarPPaula
DDoraQQuelle
EEmilRRichard
FFriedrichSSamuel
GGustavTTheodor
HHeinrichUUlrich
IIdaVViktor
JJuliusWWilhelm
KKaufmannXXanthippe
LLudwigYYpsilon
MMarthaZZacharias

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